Arizonians were treated to a special performance on Wednesday night at the Margaritaville Cafe in Glendale, Arizona. Jimmy Buffett and Coral Reefer Band member Mac McAnally played an afternoon acoustic show to celebrate the opening of the restaurant.

Buffett mentioned during the show that they would end the 2008 tour in Hawaii.

The set list was largely “Songs You Know By Heart”, but a great acoustic version of “Stories We Could Tell” finished off the night. View the entire set list here and Bamafan’s show review here.

Did you attend the show? Share your thoughts on our Discussion Board or post your photos in our Photo Gallery.

Update – The Arizona Republic has a story on the show: “Buffett opens ‘Margaritaville’ to cheering crowd”. The article includes a great slideshow of pictures from the show.

The 2008 tour kicks off Monday, April 21st with a show from Houston, Texas.

Jimmy Buffett and Coral Reefer Mac McAnally will play a show at the new Margaritaville Cafe in Glendale, Arizona today to celebrate the grand opening.

The show will be broadcast live on the web at www.radiomargaritaville.com and on Sirius Satellite Radio channel 31.

Miles Hampton will DJ the pre-show from the cafe beginning at 6pm EDT (3pm local). Jimmy and Mac will take the stage at 9pm EDT (6pm local). Gates open at 4pm local time.

You can follow along with the set list and chat with other parrotheads during the show on our discussion board.

Stephen Engle of Bloomberg interviewed Jimmy Buffett before his January 18th benefit show in Hong Kong. They discussed how Jimmy got started, how he continues to have success, and even talked about the economy. There is some great video shown during the interview, and Jimmy even breaks out his guitar to sing an acoustic solo version of Margaritaville. Below is Part I of the interview:

Jimmy Buffett Hong Kong concert interview Part 1
Uploaded by leobellan

The January 18th benefit concert in Hong Kong was a huge success, raising more than $420,000 for Hong Kong’s neediest children. The interest from Parrotheads in Asia was so great, that event organizers are apologizing that so many devoted fans couldn’t get tickets to the show:

As messages begging for tickets were left on Tom Crampton’s blog and strangers started tracking down Dave Garcia’s personal phone number, we understood our major miscalculation Jimmy Buffett’s appeal to devotees in Hong Kong, China, Thailand, the Philippines and beyond.

Truth is, we had no idea how big Jimmy’s first-ever appearance in Hong Kong would become. The concert outstripped all expectations, drawing fans from around Asia and we now realize that we could easily have sold 3,000 tickets instead of 650.

The article on Crampton’s blog goes on to explain Buffett’s generosity:

Buffett himself was confident of success from beginning. So confident, in fact, that he not only flew out with his band and gave the concert for free, but he also paid for the beer and tequila and donated the proceeds from the sales to the charity.

While visiting the orphanage during his visit, Jimmy led the kids in singing the Hokey Pokey and had such fun we actually had trouble getting him out.

At the concert, he played for more than two hours and added the song “Somewhere Over China” to the playlist for the first time in 14 years.

The good news for Buffett fans: Jimmy loved the fans, Hong Kong and the charity so much, he plans to return next year.

Read the entire blog post here. Also, read Fortune Magazine editor Clay Chandler’s article on the benefit: “Buffett (Jimmy, Not Warren) Rescues China.”

Jimmy Buffett performed a USO concert this week for our troops aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) during a recent port visit in the Middle East. Navy.mil has some photos of the event: